NOTES AND QUERIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3274, 13 December 1916, Page 37

NOTES AND QUERIES.

Questions for reply in corning issue to be received not later than SATURDAY night. Questions will NOT be replied to through tho post.

Old Miner.—The mineral substances you sent for examination were submitted to Professor Park, who has reported that the white sample is a piece of kaolin clay. Kaolin clay has no market value, unless it occurs in large bodies in places where transport is easy and cheap. The dark blue substance is a piece of what is known to quartz miners as flucan or pug. Pug is a stiff, tenacious, clay, usually found along the walls of lodes and fault planes. It is often found along joint planes intersecting shales and clayey rocks. Here it forms what are called "soapy heads." Pug, or puggy clay, is formed by tho attrition of fissured rock surfaces during faulting and earth movement. G. F. F.—The sample of soft rock you sent for identification is said by Professor Park to bo a decomposed volcanic tuff or breccia. Piocks of this kind form heavy, clayey lands that require good drainage to keep them sweet.

Inquirer.—The specimen of pea plant forwarded for identification reached the office in a somewhat faded condition, and it was impossible to identify it with any degree of certainty. Can you forward another and larger specimen? ARGUMENT. —Yon require to have a driver's license in the ordinary way—practically acertificate of competency to drive a motor lorry. Fc the rest, apply to your own county council, by whose regulations you are governed. Gasoline. —(1) Apply to the Vacuum Oil Company, giving particulars of the kind of lamp for which the gasoline is required. (2) If you communicate with Mr O. J. W. Napier, public analyst, Otago University, he will advise you on the substances for analysjs and the cost. Frances. —To salt down butter: Use Joz to loz of ground-fine salt to each lib of butter, and sprinkle on the grains of butter as scon as they are removed from the churn; work it into the butter, thoroughly incorporating the salt, and secure tho necessary freedom from moisture, as butter which is intended for potting should be as dry as Ijossible. Glazed crocks are suitable for storing the butter. Scald them well, allow to cool, and pack the butter closely, so that it will be perfectly solid, tho crock being filled up to within 2in of the top, and a layer of salt about 2in in thickness placed

over the butter, so that the vessel is quite fall. Cover with paper or bladder and tie down. The crock of butter should be kept in a cool, dry place, and, when required for use, may be cut up into blocks and soaked in water at a temperature of GOdegFahr., or thereabouts, for half an hour, when much of the salt will be removed. It is important to use a good brand of salt, and work it well through, the butter to ensure evenness of colour and flavour, otherwise, in all probability, it will be streaky or mottled in appearance and not uniform in taste and colour. Pot in ihe month of February.

Conckete, Kaitangata.—Mr H. M. Davcy, consulting engineer, Princes street, replies:—"l have found several receipts, but none of the class, or for doing the work, and saving the amount of material, as you mention. You had better, therefore, get hold of the number of the Scientific American and let me know something more about the preparation. It seems rather as if it were an advertisement, that so often saves all sorts of things, but, when you have.it, you cannot quite make out where the saving is. Seeing, however, that they now make slates of concrete, there does not seem any adequate reason why you could not get the articles as thin as you wish, using fine sand, with or without pulverised stone or small pebbles if preferred. You could make tip some slabs of concrete by using a flat board-and nailing a rim the size of the slab needed—say gin or |in, or any thickness of rim, —gauzing the thickness by a "straight edge" and finishing; with a steel trowel, and so find the best mixture and proportions of cement to rise. The slower they dry, the better. If you do this, kindly let me know how you get on.

F. M. —Your question reached us too late to be referred to a veterinary expert for a reply in this issue.